Although Škėma began his writing career believing in “man’s power to survive even in the most appalling situations”, by the end of his life Škėma had lost much of this faith:
Creative nihilism is my religion. The moment of death is the most meaningful reality. And the tangle of illusions we cling to while alive. We die and others are born, live, and die. I admit that I may be wrong. And my world view is the vision of an exhausted man. But it is real.
Škėma died in 1961 in an automobile accident while returning to Brooklyn from an annual gathering of Lithuanian liberal intellectuals where he had been celebrated by friends and colleagues – one of his plays was staged, and his fiftieth birthday and the twenty-fifth anniversary of his creative career were marked. His friends felt that his death was the most refined and absurd manifestation of fate, chance, or a prank of the gods. In 1964, the émigré poet Algimantas Mackus wrote a book of poems dedicated to Škėma called Chapel B (after the chapel in which Škėma was laid out) and later that year also died in a car accident. These were strange coincidences with the similar death of the French existentialist philosopher and writer Albert Camus, whose ideas had had a great influence on Škėma’s writing.
Decades later, Škėma’s death has become a kind of legend and the writer himself a symbol of freedom and rebellion. His work gains new existential and aesthetic meaning with each epoch. During the years when Lithuania was regaining independence, White Shroud was especially important for its harsh, evocative depiction of the Soviet occupation and how it damaged those who remained in Lithuania as well as the refugees who were forced to retreat. The massive wave of economic emigration that Lithuania has experienced since it regained independence (500,000 people have left the country since the 1990s) highlights the conflict between individual aspiration and the need to make a living that often leads to the tragic but conscious choice of becoming a “cog in a wheel”, like Antanas Garšva.
“I should have listened to a well-known Vilnius clairvoyant’s advice and learned English,” Škėma once said, and indeed it seemed fated that he would have trouble with that language. For decades after his death, White Shroud failed to appear in English, despite several translators’ attempts. This task would require a translator with a particular combination of qualities – not only an excellent command of both languages, poetic intuition, and the requisite academic training, but also some of Škėma’s (whose friends called him “the opposite of an archivist of traditional values”) courage and innovation. White Shroud found such a translator in Karla Gruodis, a daughter of the DP generation, who grew up in Montreal, where most of the novel was written.
Remembering America’s inhospitality towards Škėma’s work, one last coincidence is worth noting. The first Lithuanian edition of White Shroud was published in London, in 1958; now, seventy years later, it makes its English-language debut thanks to the determination of another UK publisher.
Loreta Mačianskaitė, Institute of Lithuanian
Literature and Folklore
Vilnius, January 2018
White Shroud
Blessed are the idiots,
for they are the happiest
people on Earth.
The greatest wisdom is
childish; the greatest
eloquence, a stutter.
Lao Tze
The organist from Lapės
stuttered when speaking,
but he sang beautifully.
Folk saying
Prologue
BMT Broadway Line. The express arrives. Antanas Garšva steps on to the platform. Six minutes to four in the afternoon. He strides along the half-empty platform. Two black women in green dresses observe people exiting the train. Garšva zips up his plaid jacket. It is August in New York, but his fingers and toes are cold. He climbs the stairs. His freshly shined loafers shine, and there’s a gold ring on the little finger of his right hand – a gift from his mother, a memento of his grandmother. Engraved on the ring: 1864, the year of the Uprising.¹ A fair-haired nobleman knelt gallantly at a woman’s feet: “I may die, esteemed lady, and if I perish, my last words will be – I love thee, forgive my boldness, I love you…”
Garšva continues along an underground corridor to 34th Street. Mannequins pose in the storefronts. Why not install exhibits in such windows? Say a wax Napoleon, standing at ease, his hand tucked behind his lapel, and next to him – a wax girl from the Bronx. The price of the dress – tik twenty-four dollars.² Tik tik tik tik. Heart beating too fast. I need to warm up my fingers and toes. It isn’t good to get chilled before work. There are some pills in my pocket. Good. Most geniuses were ill. “Be glad you’re neurotic.” A book by Louis E. Bisch, MD, PhD. Two doctors in one. Because double Louis E. Bisch contends, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Michelangelo, Pascal, Pope, Poe, O. Henry, Walt Whitman, Molière and Stevenson were all neurasthenics. A convincing list, ending with Dr L.E. Bisch and Antanas Garšva.
And Antanas Garšva turns to the right. More stairs. Too many stairs, they’re repetitive. The fall of Surrealism? So be it. I’ll erect Saint Anne’s Church in Washington Square (Napoleon, who wanted to transplant it to Paris, can rage), and pretty nuns will file in, yellow candles in their virginal hands.³ In 1941 in Vilnius, Elena saw a group of nuns being deported by the Bolsheviks.⁴ They were taken away in a dilapidated truck, along a poorly paved street, so the little truck shook and the upright nuns kept falling down, they weren’t athletic. Guards stood in the corners, pushing away the tumbling nuns with rifle butts. They split open one nun’s forehead, and the nun didn’t wipe away the blood, maybe she didn’t have a handkerchief.
Antanas Garšva passes through the glass doors of Gimbels department store and on to the street. He holds open a door so that a freckled young woman with obviously padded bras, sixty-seven cents a pair, can slip through. He’ll stop seeing her. Elena – he’ll stop seeing her. Elena, I will give you a carnelian ring and an abandoned streetcar in Queens Plaza. Elena, you will mould me a nobleman’s head, it’s in the cornice of a house on Pylimo Street, in Vilnius. Elena… don’t make me cry.⁵
Antanas Garšva walks along 34th Street to his hotel. Here’s a snack bar. 7UP, Coca-Cola, ham and cheese sandwiches; Italian with lettuce. Here’s a store. Sturdy English shoes, plaid socks. Elena, I will buy you new stockings. You’re a bit careless – your stockings are crooked, the seam is all twisted, take them off, take them off. I will pull the new ones on to your legs myself. Firmly. Elena, I like saying your name. To the tempo of a French waltz. Ele-na, Ele-na, Ele-na, Ele-na, Ele-na-a. A little sorrow, a little taste, esprit. Pangloss was a professor of metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. Stones are required for the construction of fortresses, he proclaimed. Roads are a means of transport, proclaimed a transport minister. I need your name in order to remember you. It’s all reasonable. I want to kiss you again. Reasonably. Only on the lips, tik on the lips. I will trace Tristan and Isolde’s sword on your neck with magical chalk. I will not kiss you below the neck. Tik tik, just just. Thank God my fingers and toes aren’t cold any more. Ele-na, Ele-na, Ele-na, Ele-na-a. And here’s my hotel.
Antanas Garšva goes through the door “For employees”, he waves to the watchman in the glass booth, he pulls a white card from the black board. On the card – last name, elevator operator, days, hours. Clack – the clock in the metal box punches the time. One minute after four. His heart goes tik, the clock goes clack. The night watchmen patrol at night, punching time, clocks hanging from their necks in leather sheaths. Slender steel rods are mounted in nooks throughout the hotel. Clack – they punch. The clock is like a whore wandering from house to house. Every two hours a night watchman is allowed to smoke a cigarette, and the clock rests on his sagging stomach. As a Lithuanian poet writes, my castle’s dead sundial sleeps on the sand.⁶
Antanas Garšva climbs down the stairs to the basement. He meets a black guy who lost his right forearm to an ice machine.
“How’re you doing?” the black man asks him.
> Garšva replies, “Fine, and you?”
The black guy doesn’t answer and climbs the stairs. One day his arm suddenly felt very hot, it fell on to a block of ice, the hot arm must have melted the ice. This black guy is a fanatic. To sacrifice your arm for a piece of ice? A heroic gesture. He’s paid a dollar fourteen an hour.
Garšva walks along the basement corridors. Tin casks line the walls. Heating pipes snake along the ceiling. You can reach them with your hand. No need. His fingers are warm now. His system has performed its own blood transfusion. Leonardo da Vinci needn’t have bothered with anatomy. He should have painted another Last Supper on canvas, and the dinner wouldn’t have gotten mouldy. And I shouldn’t have gone to the tavern to talk with Elena’s amiable husband.
Kad išmanyčiau
Pusiau dalyčiau
Žalių raštų žiurstelius.⁷
Antanas Garšva walks into the changing room area. He inhales the familiar stench. The first space he passes through contains the john. The toilets are separated only by panels, so if there’s someone squatting next to you, you can see his shoes and his trousers down at his ankles. And the sinks and mirrors are right there. The hotel instructions state: employees must be clean, their hair smoothly groomed. Unruly poetic locks are forbidden. As are yellow socks and smoking in areas frequented by hotel guests. I remember the old chaplain’s words, when we were children: “Now here’s an example for you. Now look at this lovely child – so nice, so pretty, so clean.” Oh how we loathed that teacher’s pet!
“What’re you so sad for today, Tony?” asks Joe, another elevator operator. A stocky, ruddy fellow. He’s sitting on the bench, leafing through the Faust libretto. He’s learning to sing baritone.
Antanas Garšva belts out, “Aš turiu apleisti jauuu… That’s how Valentin’s aria begins in Lithuanian.”⁸
“What a musical language,” says Joe.
“Look at me, now I’m an ambassador for the Lithuanian nation,” Garšva reflects.
To the right, a doorway, and beyond it the green lockers. Antanas Garšva unlocks his locker and unzips his plaid jacket. He undresses slowly. For a while he’s alone. If Vilnius didn’t exist, Elena wouldn’t talk about it. If a woman were not hanging on a wall (holding a violin like a prayer book, her hair loose and blue), I wouldn’t talk about her. And I wouldn’t hear the legend of the harpsichord or be interrogated by the judges. Ein alltaeglicher Vorgang, A hat mit B aus H ein wichtiges Geschaeft abzuschliessan… and so on, like in Kafka’s story. A triangle: wife, lover, husband. A Lithuanian actor waved his little hand and said, “You Buridan’s ass: I am the lover!” What’s wrong with me today? One scene after another. Should I take a pill? Today is Sunday, today is a difficult workday.
Antanas Garšva takes out his elevator operator’s uniform. Blue trousers with red piping, a beet-coloured jacket with blue lapels, “gold” buttons, braided epaulettes. Shiny numbers on the corners of the lapels. An 87 on the left, an 87 on the right. If a guest is dissatisfied with an elevator operator he can note the number and report him to the starter. “That 87 is a son-of-a-bitch, that 87 took me four floors too high, 87 87 87, I wasted two minutes in this box, that goddam son-of-a-bitch 87!” It’s fun to berate a number. It’s fun to use numbers. 24,035 deported to Siberia.⁹ Fun. Forty-seven dead in an airplane crash. Fun. 7,038,456 needles sold. Fun. Tonight Mister X got lucky three times. Fun. Today Miss Y died once. Fun. Right now I’m alone and I’ll take a pill and have more fun. Antanas Garšva fishes a small, long, yellow bullet from his trouser pocket and swallows it. He sits on an empty box and waits. Tik tik, tik tik – my heart. In my brain, in my veins, in my dreams.
Lineliai, liniukai
Lino žiedas, ai tūto
Lino žiedas, ratūto –
Linoji, linoji, tūto!
Lino žiedas, ai ratūto!¹⁰
Doctor Ignas likes Lithuanian folk songs. He cites verses while X-raying his patients, poking them with needles, writing out prescriptions, shaking hands, “Lino žiedas, ai ratūto, I hope to see you looking better on Thursday.” Garšva inspired this love of folk songs in the doctor during the German occupation in Kaunas.¹¹ Doctor Ignas even composes the occasional poem himself, while waiting for his patients. He consults Garšva at length about every stanza. His round little face blushes pink like a girl’s when he receives a compliment. His poems are unpretentious; they’re just poems for himself. Doctor Ignas doesn’t publish them, but reads them to Garšva and his father who barely reads the newspapers.
Antanas Garšva saw Doctor Ignas two weeks ago. Again an X-ray of the ribs, again the heart’s zigzags etched on a scrolling band, again the bare arm wrapped in rubber while the mercury rose to whichever number the blood chose, and again the eyes were examined.
“Vai tu rugeli, vai tu siūbuonėli,” said Doctor Ignas when the two of them were once again seated in his office, facing each other across the desk.¹² Antanas Garšva awaited the verdict. Doctor Ignas was silent. He tilted his angelic little head, his yellow hair shone atop his broad skull, two sad wrinkles ran down from the corners of his nose, and the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses reflected Garšva’s Byzantine face. Smoke rose silently from their cigarettes. The coloured pencils stuffed into an imitation baseball turned grey.
“I’m looking forward to your next poem,” said Antanas Garšva. Doctor Ignas took off his horn-rimmed glasses and placed them on his prescription pad. He blinked, like a typical myopic.
“I haven’t written one,” he replied sadly.
“Why?”
“Could you take some time off work?” asked Doctor Ignas.
“Is it serious?” asked Garšva.
“It’s not tragic, but…”
“… but, I return to the manor and meet an old woman holding two bright candles,” Garšva recalled aloud. And with this silent memory returned a summer evening, a lake, yellow water lilies, cows lowing in the distance, Jonė’s tanned feet in their little white shoes, and even further back, a song. An evening in a Lithuanian backwater, where the wealthiest inhabitant was the Jew Mileris, who sold sardines from Kaunas.
“Could you be more precise?”
“It isn’t that tragic. Come back the day after tomorrow, I’ll examine you again and l’ll be more precise. If your finances are in bad shape, I can help.”
Doctor Ignas’s head drooped even lower over his chest.
“I’d like to work until Wednesday. It would make for a nice round pay cheque,” said Garšva.
“You can try, but be sure to come back the day after tomorrow.”
Garšva got up and went towards the door. At the door they shook hands.
“Ulioj, bite, ulioj, kadigėle!” said Garšva.¹³
“Bičiute, bitele – kadijo! I’ll be expecting you the day after tomorrow,” replied Doctor Ignas.¹⁴
Garšva glances at his wristwatch. Fifteen minutes to start time. Not so tragic. There are no more tragedies. The remaining New York theatres stage dramas and comedies. Tragedies are staged in museums. A plaid jacket and brown trousers hang in the locker. This elevator operator’s uniform is modernised Johann Strauss. Person number 87 could get sick wearing a uniform from an operetta. I didn’t go see Doctor Ignas the day after tomorrow. The next day I telephoned Elena’s husband and we met in Stevens’s tavern. Should I drop work, change out of my uniform, and go to see Doctor Ignas? I feel strange. The contour of the peeling cupboard door looks like a giant ear. Who banned surrealism from Lithuanian literature? Was it Mažvydas?¹⁵ Kaukus, Žemepatis ir Lauksargus pameskite, imkiet mane ir skaitykiet.¹⁶ I can’t take off my uniform. I’m a Lithuanian kaukas in a Strauss operetta. Imkiet mane ir numarinkiet ir tatai marindami permanykiet.¹⁷ There are no more tragedies. There are the peeling cupboard doors, an empty Coca-Cola box, a few minutes to start time. Tik tik, tik tik – in my temples, in my veins, in my dreams. Imkiet mane, bičiute, bitele, kadijo!¹⁸ The celluloid bullet has dissolved, the bitter powder has shrouded the brain. Number 87 already feels calmer, more fun
. A chemical blanket has enveloped this number. Elena, I will not be able to give you a carnelian ring or an abandoned streetcar wagon in Queens Plaza. It doesn’t matter, Elena, soon it won’t matter at all.
1The 1863–64 Uprising (or January Uprising) against Russian imperial rule in the countries of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine). The revolt was brutally repressed – over 20,000 were executed, deported, or sent into forced labor – and was followed by a strict ban on Lithuanian publications that lasted until 1904.
2tik: “just” or the sound of a clock in Lithuanian.
3A Gothic church in the Old Town of Vilnius. Passing through Vilnius, the Emperor Napoleon is said to have been so struck by its beauty that he wanted to take it back to Paris.
4During the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania (May 1940 to June 1941), Soviet forces organised the first deportations of Lithuanian citizens to remote parts of Siberia as part of a campaign of repressing resistance to Sovietisation policies. From June 14 to 19, 1941, 17,485 people, the majority women and children, were deported. The deportations continued after the second occupation of Lithuania in 1945 and lasted until 1953; an estimated total of 245,000 Lithuanians were deported.
5Pylimo is a street in Vilnius.
6From a 1952 poem by Lithuanian émigré poet Henrikas Nagys (1920–1996).
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